Life in China 2016: A Picture A Day, July 29 – Eye exams in China are basically the same as in the USA, yet different. To start with, the exam is free when you buy the glasses. You don’t need an appointment for a storefront shop, you just walk in. Because space comes at a premium in China, often the exam is just done in the shop, or sometimes in a very small room. They have the machine that reads your current prescription and use that to start with. I was buying a prescription dive mask a couple of weeks ago, and just went into an eyeglass shop and they read my current prescription at no charge so I could take it to the dive shop. Instead of the big machines that the lenses are placed in and swung into place in front of your eyes (in the USA), here, they generally use special glasses that the lenses fit into to test your prescription; They always remind me of big bug eyes! Then, while we are used to reading English letters on the eye chart, in China, there are all capital E’s facing in different directions. As they point to each one, you simply place your hand the right direction … fingers up, down, to the right or left … to indicate the position of the letter “E.”